Employees at Lewiston, Maine-based St. Mary's Regional Medical Center created a "wall of shame" that targeted patients with disabilities, according to an investigation by the Maine Human Rights Commission and cited by Bangor Daily News.
A former hospital employee, MyKayla McCann, alerted the human rights commission filing claims of a hostile work environment and HIPAA violations. Ms. McCann said she was among the patients whose records were posted on the "wall of shame."
St. Mary's Regional Medical Center said it removed the wall within "weeks" despite Ms. McCann's claim that the hospital's administrator took months to take action. In a statement to Becker's Hospital Review, the hospital said it took immediate action to investigate and address Ms. McCann's concerns.
"Covenant Health and St. Mary's Regional Health System does not tolerate or condone discrimination or harassment of any kind, for any reason. We do not tolerate any violation of our patients' privacy or medical records. We deeply regret that this situation occurred [back in 2016], and we sincerely apologize for the impact this situation has had on Ms. McCann," Covenant Health said in a statement.
Ms. McCann said she found the wall of patient records on the inside of a cabinet door in June 2015 when she started working as a laboratory technician at the hospital. Patient medical records had been cut and taped to the door, which "included information detailing patients' sexual activity, genital dysfunction, bowel movements, bodily oders and other personal maladies," the investigation found.
St. Mary's Regional Medical Center's parent company Covenant Health conducted an investigation and determined that no patient data was breached.
Ms. McCann alerted her supervisor in September 2016 that she thought coworkers were wrongfully looking at her medical records since she was a patient at St. Mary's Regional Medical Center. Upon investigation, the hospital determined that six to eight employees reviewed Ms. McCann's records. It wasn't until December 2016 that St. Mary's Regional Medical Center disciplined two employees for improperly viewing the records.
In January 2017, Ms. McCann resigned "due to the hostile work environment and the numerous HIPAA violations," that she reported. Prior to her leaving, she said she took a picture of the "wall of shame," to indicate the hospital had left it up despite her complaints.
"Coworkers constructed a workplace display ridiculing patients with disabilities. [Ms. McCann] encountered the display every day as part of her regular environment, making harassment pervasive," the report said. "The information posted on Shame Wall was intended to demean and humiliate and include supposed 'jokes' about the hospital's physically and mentally disabled patients."
The report found St. Mary's Regional Medical Center took corrective action to allow Ms. McCann to continue to work after she expressed her concerns. However, the Maine Human Rights Commission found that taking three to four months to investigate and remove the patient records was an "unacceptable delay."
"An incident such as this weight heavily on the St. Mary's family of employees," said Steven Jorgensen, president of St. Mary's Health System. "However, I have every confidence that our health system will continue to respond to all employee issues in a manner that promotes human value while honoring our core values of compassion and integrity. On behalf of the entire St. Mary's family, we are making every effort to learn from this incident and to ensure this type of behavior never occurs again."